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Theatre

American actors have often struggled with the nuances of his inimitably English dialogue. The first of his plays to be performed on Broadway was How The Other Half Loves, in 1971, starring Phil Silvers, under the direction of Gene Saks. “It was a very American show, an experiment to try to make my work American, which I think in retrospect makes as much sense as setting Neil Simon in Godalming,” Ayckbourn says.

Jobs is portrayed as a “visionary asshole” who trampled on friends in his quest for perfection. He changed the way we understand and engage with the world three times, Daisey argues, but he was also a manipulative egotist, an unbearably demanding, capricious boss and a ruthless businessman who would do anything to achieve market dominance.

Tony Kushner discusses his new play, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, plus revivals of his Pulitzer Prize winning epic, Angels In America, and the film script he’s writing about Abraham Lincoln.

A lecture about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is probably not most people’s idea of a relaxing night out, but that’s what’s been packing in audiences in at the Public Theatre in downtown Manhattan recently. New Yorker correspondent Lawrence Wright has adapted an article that he wrote about Gaza for the stage.

The Puerto Rican Sharks – one of two rival gangs fighting over a patch of Manhattan turf – now speak and sing in Spanish. But is a linguistic shift enough to make West Side Story relevant again? Or has one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities simply changed too much with each new wave of immigrants for the show to keep up.

“Allende’s book is an epic family saga, across three generations, full of ghosts and wonderment – a classic example of a genre, magic realism, that is notoriously difficult to stage. We sent our reporter Andrew Purcell to find out how they’re bringing the spirit world to life.”

This edition of the BBC World Service documentary strand, Close-Up, focused on the work of pioneering American theatre director Robert Wilson. Presenter Harriet Gilbert interviewed Wilson himself. I reported from the launch party of his redeveloped Watermill Centre on Long Island, speaking with artists inspired by Wilson, among them actress Isabella Rosselini and songwriter Lou Reed.